THOUGH JUST A DAY PAST ITS SELL-BY, IT DOES SMELL A BIT IFFY.

LAVAZZA COFFEE

Hypocrites, you may call us; getting all fancy with our Lavazza coffee on this here blog purporting to support down and dirty mediocrity. You are wrong.

The nebulous nature of average consumables means that somewhere you need a benchmark, and that benchmark is the local mini market. If it’s sold there, it qualifies. Lavazza coffee qualifies.

By happy chance, it’s also better ‘real’ coffee than almost any that’s projectile-puked out of a big machine anywhere: the £3-plus corporate foam/sugar combos, the £4-plus organic, in-season, roasted-a-really-specific-way coffee, all of that stuff.

It’s solid, it’s basic, it claims nor provides any sort of exotic complexity, transcendental experience, or feeling of ethical superiority. It asks no more than to be accepted as a sound beverage that gets you a tad hyped, helps you tolerate human company, and has a pleasant aftertaste.

The Lavazza slogan is ‘Italy’s favourite coffee’. If this can be proven scientific fact, then them Italians have taste, if you ignore the occasional preference for tight white jeans. Visit Italy*.

If the cheap laminated Lavazza sign flaps in the breeze outside a cafe, then, and only then are you safe to enter. But if that’s a little too much humanity-at-large for you, those home coffee-making pots can be acquired for a few quid down your local miscellaneous homeware store. Then, naturally, to the minimarket!

9/10

*We are open to lucrative sponsorship approaches from the Italian Tourist Board/ Lavazza/ Both.